Peach (14 page)

Then she’d confessed to Grand-mère and Caro how Enrique had recruited her into the Resistance. Because of her unique position she had been able to meet socially most of the members of Hitler’s High Command. At first there were just snippets of information gleaned over the brandy, but later she’d gained access to Karl’s papers and been able to find out important information about Nazi policy and troop
movements and armaments. And as her work became more dangerous so did her relationship with Karl.

When Leonie had told her of Gaston’s request for help in setting up an escape route, Lais had had the idea about the champagne trucks.

It had all clicked suddenly. The German love of champagne, the appointment of their own man to make sure supplies were maintained … therefore champagne was delivered regularly to all the hotels—including the Hostellerie. What better way to transport escapees south than in the delivery trucks? Leonie and Lais were on their way now to ask secretly for the champagne houses’ cooperation with their plan.

German military police patrolled the streets of Reims and armed guards surrounded the champagne “caves.” The town had suffered badly in the German shelling, the great grey cathedral had lost its windows and some of the famous carved angels around its vast doors were headless or had lost their wings. Certain streets were reduced to rubble with here and there a section still standing but split open, exposing intimate scenes—a bedroom with its pretty wallpaper intact, a broken bed stained from the dust and rain; a kitchen, its floor pebbled with broken dishes and a pan on the rusting stove.

The Boulevard Lundy seemed so normal. Ordinary-looking young soldiers bought postcards and took in the sights of the famous champagne houses, and the Brasserie Boulingrin by the fish market was open for business as usual. A bottle of good champagne cloaked in a white napkin to conceal its excellent label appeared unasked at their lunch table. “For old times’ sake,” they were told with a smile, “when Paris was still Paris and Leonie was its queen.” And it was there they discovered who to contact in Épernay.

At the Café Billy by the post office in Épernay a game of
ping-pong was in full swing and their contact leaned casually against the bar watching the players. Lais ordered a black coffee. “Capitaine Laurier?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.

Captaine Laurier sent them to number 20 Avenue de Champagne and Comte Robert de Vogüé, managing director of Moët et Chandon.

Moët et Chandon was the biggest of all the champagne houses and its eighteen miles of caves, some of which dated from Roman times, had sheltered the refugees of many wars. The Comte de Vogüé, a debonair ex-army officer of World War I, led a risky life as spokesman for the industry to the occupying Germans and head of the local Resistance.

The plan was discussed in secret with his brave Resistance colleagues and fellow workers, and it was arranged that, with the cooperation of the drivers, the escapees would be transported either to the Hostellerie or to other hotels along the southern coast, via the delivery trucks.

And, in a charming little salon overlooking a pretty courtyard where Napoléon had once visited, they solemnly toasted the success of their “champagne funnel” with Moët’s fabulous Dom Perignon ’34.

Jim was stranded in Lisbon. He’d flown from London Northolt yesterday expecting to catch a connecting flight to New York en route for Washington DC, but there’d been a
hitch in the plans. His plane had never arrived and no one wanted to talk about it. Grimly he assumed the worst—that it had been shot down over the Atlantic—and, leaving a message with the Embassy as to where he could be contacted, he took a room in a small hotel near the Rossio.

Lisbon’s brightly lit streets and well stocked shops came as a shock after England’s rationing and blackout. The smart cafés were crowded, there was traffic on the streets and the sound of a plane overhead wasn’t accompanied by a screaming siren and a scramble for the shelter—it just meant that some lucky bastards had got their onward-flight. Lisbon was a city in transit—everyone was waiting to go somewhere else. Foreign embassies and consulates brimmed with people demanding visas and officers in the uniforms of half a dozen different countries, including Nazi Germany, passed through on their way to secret destinations. Red Cross workers impatiently whiled away the time in pavement cafés waiting for transportation to the war zones, and armaments dealers from South America talked contracts with anonymous men in sober business suits. Lisbon thrived on intrigue and double-cross, and spies and foreign agents conducted their business in the narrow streets of the old quarter, where secrets were bought and sold on street corners and in dingy bars, as well as in high-level offices and luxury hotel rooms.

Smart in his uniform of a major in the Eighth Bomber Squadron of the United States Air Force, Jim took the Victorian Gothic iron elevator of Santa Justa a hundred feet up to the Praça Luís do Camões. The narrow streets of the Chiado were lined with smart shops selling everything from the latest furs and fashions to caviare and cream-filled pastries. And, among the pretty smocked and flowered children’s dresses in the window of “Modas do Crianças” was a charming little rag doll that would be just right for Peach.
He could just imagine it tucked up in bed with her next to the teddy and the other half-dozen stuffed animals that made up Peach’s menagerie.

Pushing open the shop door Jim collided with the woman coming out and they both stepped back politely, “Excuse me …” they apologised simultaneously in English, and then stared at each other.

“My God!” cried Jim, astonished. “
Amelie
.”

“Jim?
Oh Jim!
” Her parcels fell to the floor and she was in his arms, tears raining down her face and staining his immaculate uniform.

The shop assistant watched them curiously from behind the old-fashioned mahogany counter; you never knew what to make of these foreigners. The city was full of them, either laughing too loudly or crying too much. She ran to pick up the forgotten parcels.

“I came in to buy a pretty dress for Peach,” sniffed Amelie, “my poor little girl.”

“And I came in to get her a doll! But what on earth are you doing in Lisbon?”

“Trying to get to Peach, of course. And Lais and Leonore. Perhaps I may even be able to see Gerard … He’s a political prisoner, you know, somewhere on the Belgian border.” Amelie borrowed his handkerchief and wiped her tears. “Anyway, what are
you
doing here?”

“I’m waiting for a flight to the States—hopefully tomorrow. I was going to come to see you—after Washington. But, Amelie, you’re not seriously thinking of trying to get into France, are you?”

They walked along the Rua do Carmo while Amelie explained how the Senator had wangled her a seat on the plane and given her the names of contacts who might be able to help her.

Tension showed in the tight line of Amelie’s mouth, the worried frown between her eyes and her new thinness. Jim had heard a disquieting rumour that Gerard had been moved to another camp in Germany, but decided not to burden Amelie with this news in case it were not true. She’d learn the truth soon enough, in France.

“Tell me,” he continued, “how are you planning to get to France?”

“I was going to buy a car and drive across Spain. My Senator promised his contacts can get me the right documents—for a price.
Everything
has its price in Lisbon.
Except a car!
I’ve scoured this city from end to end—but no luck.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Jim with a smile. “You’re a de Courmont—and I’ll bet there’s still a de Courmont agency here in Lisbon. We’ll get you a car, Amelie—though I’m not sure that we should.”

“I’m going,” she said fiercely, “even if I have to walk there. Nothing will stop me now.”

Leonie’s orphans were her second family. She had founded the home many years before when she was at the peak of her career, fuelling the old Château d’Aureville—which had been Amelie’s father’s old home—with money from her world-wide tours to keep the forty children in happy modest comfort, looked after by a staff of young and loving nuns.
Leonie knew what it was like to have to give up your baby, never to see your child grow up. It had happened to her when she had given Amelie to the d’Aurevilles and they had had to flee to Brazil to protect her baby from Monsieur’s wrath. The orphanage had begun as a way of atoning for her guilt, but had grown into a part of her life that she loved.

She had asked von Steinholz if he would give her permission to travel once a month to the château near Tours, as she had always done, to visit her children.

“We will do more,” he had said. “A car and a driver will be at your disposal any day you wish to go.”

Leonie could just imagine the consternation she would cause rolling up in a German car, a German chauffeur at the wheel. “It would be better if you gave me the proper papers and I drove there myself,” she said. “After all, I wouldn’t want to take a man from his more important duties.”

“As you wish,” von Steinholz had replied, but she had seen that he was upset by her refusal. Photographs of his wife and two pretty blond children were displayed in silver frames on his desk. Von Steinholz would have liked to be counted in on a charitable act for children and she had denied him that satisfaction.

“Your papers will permit you to travel three days out of the month, Madame Leonie,” he said coldly. “That should give you sufficient time, I think.”

“I would appreciate it if you could make an addition to those papers, Commandant,” said Leonie calmly. “My little granddaughter likes to go with me to the château.”

Von Steinholz stamped the papers irritably, handing them over with a sigh. “Do you always get what you want, Madame Leonie?” he asked, sure that no man had ever refused her anything.

“Almost always,” admitted Leonie modestly.

*  *  *

It was always fun at the château, thought Peach, staring eagerly out of the car window as they spun up the drive.
There! There they were
, lined up on the steps, waving excitedly. She leaned from the car window, waving back.

“Hello, Yves,” she called, “hello, Monique. Hey, Véronique, you’ve cut your hair!” She had been coming to the château with Leonie for as long as she could remember. Leonie even said she had brought her here as a tiny baby to show the children. They were her friends, and when she came to the orphanage she became one of them.

Peach hurtled from the car and limped up the steps to embrace the Sisters. “Calmly, calmly, Peach,” they protested laughing as she flung her arms first around each of them and then around each child in turn.

Peach felt so proud as the children politely curtsied and bowed to Grand-mère and then, throwing politeness to the winds, hurled themselves into her arms, eager to be swept up and kissed.

Leonie always brought presents, kites and balls and puzzles and books; then, in the huge wondrous garden, Peach helped the children pick tiny beans and carrots that tasted so good at lunch; and afterwards there were always the “goodie bags” of sweets—Madame Frénard’s homemade toffees and fudge—given secretly under the discreetly turned backs of the Sisters.

Then upstairs in the children’s pretty flowery-papered rooms with the windows open wide to fresh country air and the crisp cotton curtains blowing in the breeze, they exchanged stories and secrets.

Later Leonie inspected their schoolwork and listened to an account of their progress, smiling her approval.

In the car on the way home, Peach noticed the little smile still lingered on Leonie’s lips. She knew that Leonie had
worked hard for orphan children all her life, that her grandmother was famed around the world for the amounts of money she had raised for children’s charities. “They adore you, Grand-mère,” she murmured, resting her head against Leonie’s arm. “It’s not such a bad thing to be an orphan, is it?”

“It means,” Leonie answered severely, “that there is no maman and no papa to spoil you and without people like the Sisters, and you and me, some children will grow up without love.”

Peach closed her eyes, imagining what it must be like not to be loved. It was hard, she just couldn’t capture the feeling. “It must be terrible,” she murmured drowsily, “never to be loved.”